Coronavirus disease-19 (COVID-19) emerged late December 2019 in the city of Wuhan, China and has since spread rapidly all over the world causing a global pandemic. While the respiratory system is the primary target of disease manifestation,
COVID-19 has been shown to also affect several other organs, making it a rather complex, multi-system disease. As such, cardiovascular involvement has been a topic of discussion since the beginning of the
COVID-19 pandemic, primarily due to early reports of excessive myocardial injury in these patients. Treating physicians are faced with multiple challenges in the management and early triage of patients with
COVID-19, as disease severity is highly variable ranging from an
asymptomatic infection to critical cases rapidly deteriorating to
intensive care treatment or even fatality. Laboratory
biomarkers provide important prognostic information which can guide decision making in the emergency department, especially in patients with atypical presentations. Several cardiac
biomarkers, most notably high-sensitive cardiac
troponin (hs-
cTn) and N-terminal pro-
B-type natriuretic peptide (
NT-proBNP), have emerged as valuable predictors of prognosis in patients with
COVID-19. The purpose of this review was to offer a concise summary on prognostic cardiac
biomarkers in
COVID-19 and discuss whether routine measurements of these
biomarkers are warranted upon hospital admission.